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wat. The important figures for miners are the btc/usd conversion rate, the network difficulty, your hash rate itself, how much you initially paid for your rig (

by Jach 13y ago

wat. The important figures for miners are the btc/usd conversion rate, the network difficulty, your hash rate itself, how much you initially paid for your rig ($/Gh) and how much power you're drawing ($/watt). All of these factors are important, but what will dominate over the coming months is power cost. Someone mining a 100 GH/s rig will make 5 times less BTC per day as someone mining a 500 GH/s rig, it's true, but if the 500 GH/s is sucking up proportionally more than 5 times the electricity then it can be better to mine with the lower hash rate. If the conversion rate improves that delays the period where electricity costs outweighs the income. For the difficulty to rise another order of magnitude (which would make BFL 60 GH/s Singles worthless), there needs to be about another 30 PH added to the network -- where's that coming from in only a month? In any case, people dropping their rigs because they're too power hungry may cause the difficulty to go down and make it worthwhile again for some who live in low-electricity-cost areas... There are variables you're not taking into account, hence the wat.

ck2 13y ago
That's the thing, the new 500Ghash machines can smoke your 500Mhash machines and they use only a little more power. They are using 28nm ASIC. A farm from a year ago can be completely outpowered by a couple of these machines. And they are coming online in force over the next 30 to 60 days.
- Jach 13y ago
  Anyone with MH/s-level farms from GPUs have turned them off months ago (or moved to Litecoin). There's some new 28nm ASICs that use less power per hash than the larger nm ASICs, so eventually those will face the same fate as GPUs from power costs (not so much from hash rate -- there are only a few TH machines on the near horizon), but the next 30-60 days isn't enough time to make that happen.
  - ValentineC 13y ago
    Isn't Litecoin's value more or less pegged to BTC? I did a quick calculation with one of the online calculators [1] and it seems that it's a challenge to turn a profit from Litecoin GPU mining too. [1] http://ltc.kattare.com/calc.php http://ltc.kattare.com/calc.php
    - Jach 13y ago
      It used to be more or less pegged, but at least over the past several months it's not quite that simple: http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-charts.php?period=alltime&resolution=day&pair=ltc-btc&market=btc-e http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-charts.php?period=al... It's hard to make a profit with litecoin, but a single 7950 can still make you around USD $1/day right now after electricity costs. I have a friend who started mining with 4 of them when summer began, they (and the motherboard, power supply, etc. he used for his setup) ROI'd a while ago. I don't know if it makes sense to buy new GPUs anymore... But at least if it does become unprofitable for all but those who have the best GPUs on the market in the cheapest electricity areas (or even for everyone in the event that litecoin dies completely), you still have very excellent gaming GPUs you can resell at a good price to people on Craigslist/ebay. With the "next gen" of consoles that have just come out being so under-powered, a gamer can expect a 7950 or better to handle any PC ports that come out of this gen...

by Jach 13y ago

ck2 13y ago

That's the thing, the new 500Ghash machines can smoke your 500Mhash machines and they use only a little more power. They are using 28nm ASIC. A farm from a year ago can be completely outpowered by a couple of these machines. And they are coming online in force over the next 30 to 60 days.

Jach 13y ago
Anyone with MH/s-level farms from GPUs have turned them off months ago (or moved to Litecoin). There's some new 28nm ASICs that use less power per hash than the larger nm ASICs, so eventually those will face the same fate as GPUs from power costs (not so much from hash rate -- there are only a few TH machines on the near horizon), but the next 30-60 days isn't enough time to make that happen.
- ValentineC 13y ago
  Isn't Litecoin's value more or less pegged to BTC? I did a quick calculation with one of the online calculators [1] and it seems that it's a challenge to turn a profit from Litecoin GPU mining too. [1] http://ltc.kattare.com/calc.php http://ltc.kattare.com/calc.php
  - Jach 13y ago
    It used to be more or less pegged, but at least over the past several months it's not quite that simple: http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-charts.php?period=alltime&resolution=day&pair=ltc-btc&market=btc-e http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/period-charts.php?period=al... It's hard to make a profit with litecoin, but a single 7950 can still make you around USD $1/day right now after electricity costs. I have a friend who started mining with 4 of them when summer began, they (and the motherboard, power supply, etc. he used for his setup) ROI'd a while ago. I don't know if it makes sense to buy new GPUs anymore... But at least if it does become unprofitable for all but those who have the best GPUs on the market in the cheapest electricity areas (or even for everyone in the event that litecoin dies completely), you still have very excellent gaming GPUs you can resell at a good price to people on Craigslist/ebay. With the "next gen" of consoles that have just come out being so under-powered, a gamer can expect a 7950 or better to handle any PC ports that come out of this gen...